Evidence-based medicine & Silicon Valley

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This is an amusing article about the push by Silicon Valley to use new, exciting gizmos to measure everything about ourselves all the time, jump to conclusions, and make health recommendations that aren’t evidence-based.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/popmedicine/popmedicine/98336?x…

Bottom line:

  1. Humans have a lot of variation. Signal to noise is low.

  2. We respond to stress by getting stronger.

  3. Longevity studies on large populations show that staying fit, staying active, eating healthy food, getting a decent night’s sleep and enjoying life are the well-known path to good health and long life.

  4. Hucksters have been selling health-oriented gizmos, ideas and foods pretty much forever. Silicon Valley is getting in on the (profitable) fun. Even if the new gizmos work (and they probably do) there’s no evidence that healthy people can benefit from them.

I personally like to measure my heart rate while exercising but that’s just curiosity. I got the oxygen/ heart rate monitor because of Covid-19 and its tendency to suppress O2 saturation.

https://www.historyonthenet.com/quackery-brief-history-quack…

Wendy

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I’m a big fan of evidenced-based medicine dispensed by cost-effective robots.

Most of the time I go to the doctor, they don’t even touch me with a stethoscope. You can take your blood pressure at home and phone it in. Lots of illnesses are managed off of periodic lab tests. A bot could order the tests, review the results, and make medication changes based on large, double-blind studies.

intercst

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